In 1982, the sociologist Jonathan Z. Smith famously called religion a "product of the scholars' study." That it certainly is, but it is equally a product of state regulation, legal rulings, the neighborhood PTA, the news media, and lest we forget, of its preachers, believers, saints and charlatans. What one might identify as "religion" is always a shifting entity, composed of a variety of ideas, discourses and interests. Even a single religious tradition comprises a variety of actors and voices, and when a change occurs, it concerns not only the ecclesiastical elite, but also each of these levels as well.
Consider some of the many choices that shape religion today, such as whether to consecrate homosexual bishops in the Anglican Church or to ordain women into the Catholic priesthood. Officially, the final word in such decisions is that of a small group of high-level church leaders who shape doctrine, based largely, if not exclusively, on interpretation of an internal tradition of scripture and precedent. However, their considerations are also shaped by the opinions of their own lay faithful, and by external forces, such as the law of the land, and political and social pressures from a wide variety of interest groups outside the church. The exact relationship between these internal and external forces (in other words, between church and society), is itself mediated by a number of structural factors, such as the inclusivity of theological debate, the ability of different public advocacy groups to organize and recruit effectively, and to express their views freely and the intrusiveness of official political power into the process.
Broadly speaking, religious change occurs at these three levels: society, theology and the structural context, which I will refer to as technology. Of course, these categories are not absolute. Although the secular and the religious are often treated in opposition to each other, it is of somewhat limited use to seek any substantive distinction between the two. Rather than asking whether theology evolves to reflect society or the reverse, I see the two as two sides of the same coin, with simultaneous change to both of these realms often initiated by the technologies through which the two interact. Used in this sense, technology refers simply to how things are done -- ways of ruling, educating, organizing and communicating -- and to the ideological agendas these practices invariably bring. New technologies create new realities and possibilities, instigating a cascade of effects on society, theology and the relationship between the two. Returning to one of the examples cited above, it is by no means new for certain people within and outside of the Catholic Church to support the ordination of women into the priesthood. What does change is the context in which it all takes place. Compared to one or two hundred years earlier, current debates within Western theology are fundamentally different because (among other reasons) they are now far-more inclusive. Not only do opinions on all sides reach millions worldwide by television, newspaper and the Internet but, perhaps more importantly, many of those so reached have been educated in national schools, and taught to channel their political and social activism into a florescence of highly specialized advocacy networks.
Missionary efforts on the Indonesian island of Nias began in the early nineteenth century. The French Catholic Church had attempted to establish a mission station there in 1832, but failed. In 1865, the German Rhenish Missionary Society initiated Protestant missionary activities on the island, but made very slow progress in its efforts until the end of the nineteenth century. In the first decades of the twentieth century the Christianization of Nias' people, which was supported by the Dutch colonial government, intensified, resulting in a massconversion from 1916 to 1930 what became known as the "Great Repentance" movement. Today, more than 90 percent of Nias' population are Christian, mainly Protestant.
The conversion to Christianity was linked to a reinterpretation of indigenous worship practices and cultural norms by the missionaries. The key question to be explored in this paper is how the missionaries dealt with the rich world of artifacts on Nias during the period of early evangelization. Their approach to the material culture, in particular wooden and stone statuary, is marked by points of conflict and difference but also by points of convergence and appraisal. Indigenous figures connected to what they identified as "idolatry" -- as a focus of the monotheistic polemic -- were destroyed and violated by the missionaries, as a means to eradicate spirit worship and to disparage ancestral beliefs. Other images, however, were divested of religious significance or given a new Christian one. These became works of art worthy of safeguarding as collectors' items or were relabelled as profane monuments. Cult images were placed in museums, which became new "sanctuaries." The most obvious interreligious encounter happened when native megalithic sites were matched with Christian graves and the death rituals were transformed to become acceptable to Christian doctrines. Following David Morgan, I argue that as a subject matter, the study of visual culture is a means to analyze social relations, acts of seeing and perceptions by using all imagery regarded as evidence for explanation. In fact, from the 1970s theoretical reflections of art historians have advanced the question of how images participate in the social construction of reality. This visual field was discovered by other disciplines dealing with a broader rage of artifacts moving beyond artistic and stylistic questions. The study of images and visual practice in recent years has substantially contributed to the understanding of religion and missionary history, as well as the imagery of Orientalism.
One perspective from which to explore the initial period on Nias, when the new religion continued to be accepted, is provided by mainly unpublished sources of the German missionary Eduard Fries, who spent nearly 16 years on the island, from 1904 to 1920. Fries was a prolific author, having written more than five hundred private letters and 65 circulars which were published as circulars from 1903 to 1914 for a rising audience of nearly three hundred subscribers. He also left a legacy of 140 drawings and 20 maps of Nias and a few of Sumatra. His biography is a valuable case study of the ambiguous role in which he, as an actor, is confronted with the otherness of an alien culture, while at the same time he is part of the self-initiated transformation process. In the course of his work, the conversion experience provided him with a deeper, though ambivalent understanding of the local culture.
Eduard Fries was born in 1877 in Barmen, northwest Germany. His motivation in becoming a missionary was molded by his upbringing. His father had been a teacher, and later the director of the August Hermann Francke Foundation in Halle. Latter heading the East Indian Missionary Society also had founded the oldest showroom of ethnography and natural science in Germany, which Fries often visited. Unlike many of his missionary contemporaries, Fries gained an academic education extended by a missionary training program. From 1895 to 1899, he studied theology at four different German universities. In 1902, he then became a member of the Rhenish Missionary Society. Fries left one year later to travel to the Netherlands' East Indies where he stayed with his missionary relatives on Sumatra. In 1904, he arrived on Nias, where he remained for the next 16 years, during which time he also married and fathered eight children. After starting the first mission station in the interior of Nias in Sifaoro'asi, Fries then moved east in 1913 to Ombolata where he started educating local priests. Elected as the head of the Protestant mission on Nias he coordinated the missionary work on the island. In 1913, the Protestants maintained 13 missionary stations with 118 branches and 135 schools. Fries also engaged in teaching new skills, educating illiterates, providing medical treatment, recording ethnographic observations, and conducting translations. In 1920, Fries returned to Germany for the first time after 17 years. Despite his intention to return to Nias, he accepted an appointment to become the director of the Rhenish Missionary Society in Barmen. Fries passed away two years later in 1923.
While official policy toward religion was conditioned by these preconceived theories and assumptions, its effects depended on what those practicing religion themselves understand by their faiths. In our frontier site, selected for its ethnic and religious diversity, there was no unified conception: instead, two religious imaginaries, each with many variations, underlay the annual festival, which local groups celebrated on the same day, the 15th of the sixth lunar month. The various religious buildings and caves alongside travertine pools and waterfalls were familiar to all visitors, but their use and interpretation differed for Tibetans and Han Chinese. The Han Chinese were interested in the deities of the various shrines and temples, and in the Buddhist Middle Temple and especially in the Rear Temple of the god Huanglong, built over a huge cave next to the highest pool called the Multicolored Lake (Wucai chi). Tibetans walked or rode past the same sites but their main focus was the eternally snow-capped mountain Shar Dung ri (Xiadongri, Eastern Conch Mountain) overlooking the lake. The difference of focus reflected the importance of venerated mountains, which in Tibetan tradition are deified and oversee surrounding landmarks. Tibetans regarded the Multicolored Lakes, called the Golden Lakes, as female dancers who entertained Shar Dung ri or, along with the great cave, as officials in his service.
The Tibetan understanding is that mountains and other elements of the sacred landscape were produced by famous humans of the past, who were in turn sanctified in a relationship of mutual signification. Tonpa Shenrap (Ch. Dongbaxinrao), the founder of the Bonpo sect and identical to the Buddha, created this and other sacred mountains. In the twelfth century, the lama Skyang 'phags is said to have opened three roads around the mountain, uncovered magic implements in a stone, found an image of Tonpa Shenrap in the lake, and purified the waters so that birds, local gods and demons came to worship him. At the age of 32, after years of self-cultivation (xiushen), he sanctified and perfected Shar Dung ri in the tiger month (6/15) in 1158. At the same time he succeeded in his personal search for transcendence or nirvana, leaving traces of his acts in particular rocks, caves, and springs that only the most enlightened seekers will recognize. This and similar stories project onto the landscape a version of local history peopled by powerful Tibetan gods, mountains, and lamas -- three mutually reinforcing presences that are not sharply different in nature. For pilgrims, the prior sanctification lends the power to facilitate personal healing and extend life. Within Tibetan local society, the myths' emphasis on the privileged powers of lamas affirms the hierarchy of the Tibetan priesthood. Nevertheless, in the Tibetan version, godhead does not need to be vested in (or sanctified by) temples or monasteries on these mountains. Sanctity is immanent and accessible in nature, not through human building. Feeling quite at home in the mountains, Tibetans focus on the production of individual sanctity remote from society. Their distinctive rituals, for example, scattering rlungrta, colored paper squares, at high places, and stringing cotton scripture sheets in trees and thickets, do not usually concentrate near buildings or places of worship. They also have the tradition of circumambulating sacred mountains, and of overnight cave sojourning. Even today, lamas and others well informed of Tibetan tradition refrain from visiting the "Han Huanglong temple," as some call it, but simply visit the Grotto, the Lake and the Spring behind it.
By "Huanglong" is understood a doubled figure: Huanglong the Perfected Man (Huanglong zhenren) who reached transcendence in the Grotto, and the Yellow Dragon who nourished and controlled the streams. Thus Huanglong the dragon is the focus of a fertility cult, assisted by Yu the Great (Da Yu), the Chinese water-controlling culture hero recognized in a smaller shrine above the Rear Temple, just beside the Multicolored Lake.